


a lie is a lie is a lie

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [141]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angry Maximoffs, Codependency, Gen, Jewish Maximoffs, albeit lapsed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 16:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13081170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: When the Avengers arrive the castle is empty but for two sad old men, and the twins standing as gaolers over them.





	a lie is a lie is a lie

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [MaximoffFicExchange2017](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/MaximoffFicExchange2017) collection. 



> >  
>> 
>> **Prompt:**
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> An AU where instead of (or before) tearing the Avengers apart with Ultron, the twins destroy Hydra from the inside. The twins want vengeance and justice and they will remake the entire world in their image. 
>> 
>> Bonus points: 
>> 
>> * Use the twins' mcu tie in comic backstory where HYRDA masqueraded as SHIELD  
> * The twins debating (internally, with each other, with other characters - whatevs) what level (if any) of collateral damage is acceptable in their quest for vengeance.  
> * Essentially more of a focus on the twins anger at the systems that resulted in their tragedy (which didn't really come across in Age of Ultron). Which doesn't preclude the twins still hating Tony Stark.  
> *Jewish and Romani background from the comics.
> 
> I know I didn't manage to hit all of the bonus points, but I did hint at the first (because well... it is canon), abide by the third, and make a solid nod to half of four. Apologies for not hitting all of them. 

They lied. They lied, they lied, they lied, and it sings through Wanda’s mind in a mantra, louder and brighter even than the minds she can see beyond the brink of her own. The scarlet spills from her fingers and she struggles to control it, to bind it to her will with all her strength. She can feel Pietro in the next room, shaking into silver and blue, sprinting into and against walls when he tries to so much as move.

She reaches out a scarlet finger, gently parts the winds that rim her brother’s mind and whispers in.  _ Calm _ she sends to him and feels him still in surprise.  _ We have power now. We will be free. We will make right. _

Confusion rises from the cacophony of his mind - the winds and the hummingbirds and the monkeys which climb the vast tree and its vines in the core of his mind - and she shows him the images she has seen. The skulltopus badge, as worn by Strucker. The skulltopus badge in their books as children.

The skulltopus badge just beneath the Nazi swastika and bile rises in her brother’s throat.

_ They lied, _ she sends, and twists two wooden blocks into one solid piece.  _ We shall destroy them. _

 

* * *

 

Destruction is not easy. Destruction is not hard. Destruction requires certain purpose and Wanda has always had that. Destruction requires the ability to lock away regrets and Pietro has had that from the moment he decided to make himself Wanda’s protector and nothing else.

Destruction requires strength of will, yes, but also willfulness to do harm and paired together the twins have these traits in spades.

 

* * *

 

“All they took from us,” Pietro whispers in the exhales as he punches. “Oma and Opa, and then making the riots, taking Mutti and Vati-”

Wanda’s scarlet dances, her eyes glowing red. “Now they take from us hope as well.”

_ We must end them, _ they think when shut back into their cells.

_ We must destroy them, _ they think as they reach fingers out to the hard concrete wall between them.

_ We will satisfy our vengeance,  _ Pietro thinks.

_ We will do right by those we lost, _ thinks Wanda.

Outside their cells the guards begin to whisper  _ Heil HYDRA. _

 

* * *

 

A lie is this: a truth twisted up and turned around and made untrue.

But, at its core, there is still a truth.

SHIELD falls, but HYDRA does not fall with it.  _ A thug for SHIELD _ is how Strucker thinks for his work under SHIELD’s thumb, but they can see he is HYDRA down to his very bones. They see his children secreted away - the elder two kept carefully from SHIELD’s precious List of Enhanced and Advanced, the younger paraded around like some kind of toy.

All done for sake of his secret cause.

Soon, they know, to not be quite so secret.

 

* * *

 

It makes bile rise in their throats as they hold themselves back from blinking at the shouts singing out hail to HYDRA. It makes bile rise to not refuse, to not recant, to not return to Novi Grad the home of all their lives.

It makes bile rise to stay put, to pledge a false allegiance, to state that they will stay and train and work for HYDRAs purpose.

Even as they know it is a lie, they feel sick.

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s mind is a shattering thing. When Pietro first saw it it was stone, vast and glorious, a cathedral like the church they’d once taken shelter in but a hundred, a thousand times vaster. Huge gothic arches, vast glittering windows, all grey and black and brown pews and crimson candles and above it all her angel-thoughtform made of blood.

Now, after so much truth found in amongst the lies, Wanda’s mind has thus shed the lie they used to keep themselves safe.

The synagogue is gold and red and warm brown wood, it is  _ living _ as the cathedral was not, hunks of stone still sitting in some corners of her mind, ready to reconstruct the shield of falsehoods when the time inevitably comes again to leave. 

But her mind… it is vast. It is warm. It glimmers in all her colours, is as warm and bright and living as his own vast tree, his own lianas and vines, as the monkeys and hummingbirds that populate his mind.

There are no such creatures in Wanda’s mind, just memories wrought to human form, a congregation of blood reading and reciting scripture and debating the interpretations back and forth.

Wanda, a balance and a battle all in one.

 

* * *

 

They are trusted. That, more than anything, makes Wanda wish to be sick, but she sucks back the bile, sends scarlet soothing through her mind and Pietro, calming them to stillness as the time comes for them to strike.

_ Distrust _ is hidden in the flick of Wanda’s fingers,  _ Disgust _ in another.  _ Disapproval _ and  _ Disloyalty _ take two more and Pietro steal slips of paper and large forms, sets them afire or shreds them to pieces and flushes them down the toilet.

Disarray comes forth and Wanda and Pietro stand still and implacable at the core.

 

* * *

 

“We can trust no one,” says Strucker. “You two, and List, we are all we know for certain to be loyal-”

They know why he thinks them so loyal. He promised them vengeance, promised them the protection of their city, together he and List have given them the tools for it. He thinks that, desperate street children that they are, their loyalty to him is enough to override any doubt or disgust, any disapproval or disloyalty that might tear them away from the vengeance they seek.

He is wrong. 

“Search their minds,” he says to Wanda. “Find this rot, and eradicate it.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda is almost smiling almost laughing as she sends scarlet fingers into the minds of soldiers one by one. They think her mad and then they feel her scarlet coiling like serpents the same shade as blood, feel it coil into and around their deepest thoughts and they  _ fear. _

“Disloyal,” she says, of a man who is so loyal to HYDRA’s cause it makes her sick to her stomach.

“A liar,” she says of a man so earnest in his belief that HYDRA is right that she could gut him and feel no remorse.

“A…  _ mistake,” _ she pronounces, of one man who is no such thing, quite deliberately placed by Strucker’s now-gone SHIELD superiors. “Send him back from whence he came,” she says, and curdles his mind from fear and concern to disloyalty and hate and a desire to destroy all of HYDRA’s goals.

 

* * *

 

“Find their lies,” Strucker says to Pietro. “With all your speed, find their secrets, their stashes and  _ bring them to me!” _

 

* * *

 

Strucker is mad and maddening, uncertain as the truth slips between his fingers. He is a car on ice, slipping and sliding and every twist of the wheel only sends it more out of control and it is  _ so easy _ to fabricate secrets and stashes with all his speed. No one can track him - he can be to Novi Grad and back in two minutes, and they only check on him every five - and so he can gather what he needs, collect together truth and lies, create a grand story with his memory and Wanda’s grasp of the lies they fear, and set up guilty agent after guilty agent until the castle is almost bare.

From down the line, the  _ mistake _ who was not a mistake sends them secrets. 

Sends them the story of how he is dismantling the structure with death and denial as his only weapons.

 

* * *

 

The castle empties. Strucker and List turn on each other and for once it is not the doing of Wanda’s scarlet, just hateful minds hating each other as they lose power, lose their purpose, lose their goals all in the name of fear.

Agent Mistake has found himself, pried his way out of Wanda’s scarlet mind-trap, but he does not seem to hate nor resent, still sends reports to the castle to the Maximoffs alone.

“I have found them,” he says, “The remnants. The Avengers are coming.”

 

* * *

 

When the Avengers arrive the castle is empty but for two sad old men, and the twins standing as gaolers over them.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


End file.
